INSULT TO INJURY: UNDERSTANDING CLINTON: THE KING IS DEAD; LONG LIVE THE KING

When Audys Duvall told my first-grade class stories of American history, we believed her. And not just because she was our teacher, nor because she was so old that we imagined she had lived through the events.

No, in those days before the Vietnam-era radicalism and post-Watergate cynicism, we, in that little town south of Kansas City, believed her because Mrs. Duvall, with her simple cloth dresses and sensible shoes, was America.

So we accepted her stories, including the one about George Washington. After the American Revolution, she taught us, our founding fathers went to Gen. Washington and pleaded with him to become king. He refused. America, he told them, was a nation of, by, and for the people and as such did not need a king. America, Mrs. Duvall repeated, was not a place of kings.

I don't know if the story is true. Frankly, I don't really care. What matters about the story is that it has so entered the American mythos that even now it informs our understanding of ourselves. To this day we look at ourselves as a people who don't need kings.

And we don't. True enough.

Yet, the story also implies that from the very start we have been a people who want a king. Even today we have never gotten over that to desire to have a king.

Think back to 1988. Ronald Reagan, the most royal president since the days of JFK's Camelot, was leaving the office, something that seemed as nothing less than an abdication of the throne.

Little wonder, then, that the year's big news stories reflected our long-unfulfilled yearning for a king. "Sports Illustrated" greeted the trade of hockey's Wayne Gretsky from Edmonton to L.A. with a cover proclaiming Gretsky "The King of the Kings."

In the arts, the year's big controversy revolved around the original King of Kings, when director Martin Scorcese released his film "The Last Temptation of Christ." You don't mess with royalty, secular or otherwise.

But the year's biggest story gave hope to those lamenting the loss of kings. If the king was dead, or at the very least abdicating, then we needed another king.

The tabloids -- those great barometers of public sentiment -- published a story that still refuses to die, a story that in essence said, "The King is dead; long live the king!" The simple headline:

ELVIS IS ALIVE.

Elvis was more than a pelvis-gyrating rock 'n' roll star. He was the King, combining the youthful frivolity of Prince Hal with the adult excess of Henry VIII.

Even more, he was the American version of a king, ascending to the throne not by hereditary succession, but by the power of his own bootstraps. He was the Horatio Alger monarch, the rags-to-riches royal highness.

Which explains how Bill Clinton -- a man who evokes more political bile and righteous indignation than any politician since Richard Nixon -- can remain popular today even after deceiving the nation; how he managed to unseat President Bush in the first place; and why he may yet survive the whole impeachment mess to which his massive appetites have given birth.

Not that Clinton is more regal than George Bush. Hardly.

But Clinton possesses something instinctively that Bush was never able to cultivate. It's not charisma in the usual sense. Some call it the Bubba Factor. I call it the Elvis Element, a working out of the Presley Principle.

Simply put, the Presley Principle states that Americans will elect the person who has the most in common with Elvis. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford because Carter was from the South and had more hair. But Carter was ousted by Ronald Reagan because Reagan, like Elvis, was in the movies.

1984. Walter Mondale. Pfffttt. Is there anyone alive less like Elvis than Walter Mondale?

The 1988 race proved tough because neither Bush nor Gov. Michael Dukakis had much in common with the King. But at least Bush had some claim to being from the South.

Still, despite his impressive public service record -- World War II pilot, congressman, U.N. ambassador, CIA director, vice president -- Bush always seemed a pretender to the throne.

Enter Bill Clinton in 1992: baby face, devilish grin, southern drawl. So much in common with Elvis -- a daughter, a love of junk food with a corresponding weight problem, rock 'n' roll. And women, lots and lots of women.

It wasn't in spite of his alleged affairs that Clinton became and remains president, but because of them. It made him seem more like Elvis, more like the King.

If he could learn the lip curl, his place in history would be assured.

Political parties looking beyond next week's election to the year 2000 would do well to consider the Presley Principle. If they doubt its validity, they need only remember that last year, on the same weekend as the 20th anniversary of Elvis' death, the GOP had a gathering in Indianapolis of potential presidential candidates.

Guess which event got more press coverage?

In fact, a party would do well to nominate Elvis himself as its candidate. Breathing or not, he would be a formidable nominee. They could do worse.

~Jeffrey Jackson is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.